Sep 30, 2009

My Master Cleanse

Ever since we got back from our holiday, my body has not been too happy with me. I partied less this past summer than any summer in the history of me, but I could still feel the effects of living off BBQ's and beer, and letting myself slide when it came to the exercise routine I had been so vigilant about the Fall, Winter and Spring before.

Even though I had continuous compliments on my looks, my new hair, and the ever so annoying " My, you look like you've lost weight!" comment was plentiful, I knew that I had gained about 20 pounds this summer, and my body in general just felt like shit. And compliments are hard to take, when you know that they could be false statements, made just to make you feel better.

My weight has been a constant hot topic with everyone I know, and myself, for years now. I have spent the past month or so, really thinking about why I got fat, and let myself get even fatter. It isn't that I live off junk food, and don't exercise. I eat healthy foods for the most part, and I am forced to be active every day at work with my job. After talking with Wench on a couple occasions, I started to realize what the REAL problems were, and felt empowered in a way, to finally know what the hell my problems are, and have been. I was finally ready to take control of myself, learn to let the past go, and get myself healthy.

I was talking to a friend last weekend, about The Master Cleanse. She was doing a seven day stint, and although it was hard, she was very pleased with the results. She wasn't doing it to lose weight, because she's already teensy, however she did lose quite a bit anyways. She said she felt better, being able to get all the crap (literally) out of her system, and as I listened to her talk about how she wanted to better her eating habits once she was done, I just couldn't help but jump on that bandwagon. I needed to do something, and a cleanse, no matter how hard, would be a good place to start from scratch.

A few days later, she took me shopping for all my organic ingredients, and I started to mentally prepare myself for no food for a week.

On Monday night, I ate my last meal, of leftover couscous and veggie ground round, and tuna on a whole wheat bagel, and we called Film Star over to collect all the perishable food we had left in the house so there were no temptations, and no worrying on my part about wasting food.

Mornings are hard for me on the best of days. But waking up yesterday, and realising that I could not have coffee before I started my 16 hour day of work, was soul-crushing . I grumbled and bitched, and stumbled on my feet and words, as I made my Lemonade drink, and headed to work.

It was a long day. The caffeine withdrawal was so intense, that I kept getting flashbacks of Trainspotting, and that damn baby crawling on the ceiling...praying that it wouldn't happen to me. Luckily, it didn't. I was just a bitch all day, and everyone had to deal with it.

I rarely eat more than one meal a day, so I thought that giving up food would be easy peasy. However, at work my job is to cook meals and snacks for the residents...and I cook them some fantastic meals if I do say so myself. I never realized until yesterday, how much "taste-testing" I do when I cook for them. It was incredibly hard not to take a nibble here, a taste there....I wanted to try the meal I had cooked so badly, that I literally had to stop myself from licking their plates when they were done.

Once that passed, I was fine. I had a few hunger pangs, but nothing that a big glass of water wouldn't cure.

I came home and had my organic laxative tea, and went to bed.

This morning, I was extremely disappointed in the lack of explosive bowel movement. Everything I had read, said to be prepared for the intense colon cleansing that goes on. True, I have yet to do the Sea Salt Water Chug, which I will try on Friday, but I thought that the laxative on an empty stomach would give me something to talk about. Ah well, there's always tomorrow!